[chapter-delegates] DNS, hosting and the spirit of the Internet

[Eric Alloi | BlankFactory Design]

Dear all,

Regarding DNS and hosting:

It has been mentioned that ISOC is for all, and it is also for companies. At
ISOC Quebec (in Canada), we used to have our website hosted by a CMS company
with closed source (and terribly non-conforming HTML...) Now, we are in the
process of building our website back up.

=> I have given my company's (Blankfactory Design Inc.) time and resources
to "rescue" what content was in that system and break free of their CMS.
That's what's online now until we can re-design the website
=> M. Philippe Leroux has given his company's (VDL2) time and resources to
regain control of our domain name and has hosted our site temporarily
=> M. Gabriel Latour has given his company's (Volodata) time and resources
in order to host the website on a permanent basis
=> M. Fabian Rodrigez (security consultant) has given his time to organize
our chapter's mailing list

All the resources we needed were given by ISOC-Qc members. We see it as an
honor to be each giving resources to our professional association. This is
but a fraction of the people involved in ISOC-Qc and actions that were
taken. I humbly submit to all chapters that it is one effective way to go.

And even in developing countries this works. At the IF2002 conference in
Montreal (French speaking Internet users and pros), we learned how even in
Africa, people are getting together in their own ways to collaborate and
contribute.

Now if ISOC HQ can maintain a list of chapters' websites and give help to
the ones who need DNS, fine. But only as a supplement or complementary
service to those who need it.

And for membership, every member has to be first a global member before
becoming a chapter member no? So why don't we have a global member ID and
use that as a "voting card"? All on the list seem to agree to the "one
member, one vote" principle. There has not been one note of dissent about
this. How hard would it be to have a central ISOC database for members? I
suspect that if ISOC HQ would only ask, they would have plenty of volunteers
to make it happen (see how fast a conference was organized!), and that's the
spirit of the Internet!

BTW, don't IETF members have to be global members also? Who the .... else
does ISOC HQ have to answer to?

Best regards,

Eric Alloi


-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Vande Walle [mailto:patrick at isoc.lu]
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 6:16 AM
To: 'Baker Fred'; chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org
Cc: 'David McAuley'
Subject: RE: [chapter-delegates] Dumb question


Fred,

This is not a dumb question at all.

The DNS part is simple enough. We already have "england.isoc.org" for the
England chapter, adding others is just a matter of adding the chapters web
sites IP addresses to the Bind zone file and off we go. No cost. Minimal
work. Great result for our image:  sharing a single DNS name space for ISOC
and its chapters is a great way to show we are one, and simple enough.

As for the web hosting, the most problematic is not to provide the
infrastructure but to maintain it and to support it 24/7. We would be
better off to contract with a professional hosting company, so that they
would handle the support.

Patrick